Suits Recap – S9 E4: Cairo

In which Louis gets off some funny lines about Cairo and Norma III, Alex gets some dimly lit flashbacks and a present day crisis, and Harvey sort of proposes to Donna!

Let’s deal with Alex’s boring story line first. Like all Suits characters, Alex has a defining past moment that comes back often to haunt him. His involves being framed at his old law firm 8 years ago, when his boss Bratton gave him Masterson, a murderous prison-population-exploiting construction company, as a client. By the time Alex figured out what the company was up to, he was framed into covering up for their evil deeds, or else, he’d lose everything.

In flashbacks, we learn that Bratton picked Alex for the file over Craig, a handsome, ambitious and douchey lawyer who was “next in line.” Craig is played by Brian Hallisay, an actor I totally recognized from Revenge, though could I remember he played a cop on that show in its last season without looking him up on imdb? I could not.

Craig was pissed he didn’t get the client for career reasons, but he eventually found out about the murdering and the framing, and now wants Alex to convince Sam to accept a deal on an unrelated lawsuit Craig is working on. If Alex won’t, Craig will publicly reveal what Alex was mixed up in.

Alex asks Sam (who is sporting some attractive new hair) to take Craig’s deal, but she won’t, she’d rather fight Craig and win. Alex didn’t tell his wife Rosalie the truth 8 years ago. When he does now, she asks Sam to dig up some dirt on Craig so the two women can take him down together. Sam finds something, but tells Craig that their respective dirt files cancel each other out, so they can go ahead and make a deal without leverage. To protect Rosalie and Alex’s kids, Sam does this on her own. Aww, she really is part of that family now!

Faye is still glowering at everybody. Her latest source of irritation is Harvey and Donna’s romantic relationship. She says either Harvey or Donna must give up their management committee vote on firm decisions to avoid undue influence. She also asks Katrina to write up a new code of conduct for the firm and promises not to revise it, once written.

Louis, still outraged about Gretchen’s secondment to Faye’s desk, asks Katrina and her always good hair to have the code include rules on personnel re-assignments, but Katrina and her new sense of integrity refuse. She does, however, agree to include a clause about the partners being able to waive their conflicts of interest whenever they wish.

The name partners go as a group go to Faye, present the code to her, and waive all their conflicts of interest with each other, because they’re all fast friends and virtual family members, and they won’t be denied their deep bonds of Suitsdom! Faye concedes after a talk with Gretchen, the Faye whisperer.

Lovebirds Harvey and Donna are ready to break the news of their love match to Harvey’s mom Lily, and to Donna’s dad, played by Toronto actor Derek McGrath, who also plays the overly chatty repairman Frank in Kim’s Convenience, so I can’t take him seriously in this role.

Donna wears a very flattering red Fendi dress to have lunch with her dad at the Gardiner Museum. He dislikes Harvey because of what happened in S5 E12, and Harvey isn’t keen on him either. To please Donna, Harvey tries to ingratiate himself by finding an investor/buyer for some business deal the dad is pursuing. The dad doesn’t want to be bought off, but then he does. They all make up. Lily totally approves of Donna too, and can’t wait to meet her.

Donna’s had a rough week, what with Faye wanting her to give up her vote, and her dad and Harvey not getting along (until they did). She and Harvey pledge to confide in each other and share their feelings more. When Harvey says they’ll be together forever, Donna asks him if he’s proposing. He sorta is! He even told his mom Donna is The One. No ring yet though.

Next week: Return of the Mike (Ross)

Kim Moritsugu is a Toronto novelist and sometime TV show recapper. Her latest novel The Showrunner, available from your favourite bookseller, is a darkly humourous, suspenseful Hollywood-noir about female ambition inside the TV biz that has been called a “sophisticated, compelling, and surprisingly complex drama,” and has been optioned for development as a TV series.

Check out its book trailer here:

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